The Next Level In Gaming

Alien Chaos 3D is a new release on the Nintendo 3DS and is a point and shoot game available to purchase in the Nintendo eshop. At Mama and Son’s cleaning and demolition services, this veteran duo frequently has to deal with robot animal alien invasions and in Alien Chaos 3D, it looks like this workday has just begun. This was the first game of it’s kind that I have played on the 3DS and so I was interested in seeing what exactly this game had to offer.

Lets start off with talking about the story mode. The Mum character of Mama and Son’s cleaning and demolition services has been kidnapped by some maniacal mischievous animal aliens. That’s pretty much it. You must then spend multiple levels shooting Kangoroos, Bears (with shields) Armadillos, Turtles (that shoot rockets) and birds (that I can only assume are either sparrows or crows) in order to save your Mum. Each episode has 5 levels and the fifth level of each episode as you may have guessed, is a boss fight. The final bosses are quite difficult to beat but with the right tactics you can defeat them.

Now here is where the game takes a very interesting turn. Your character starts off with a machine gun and as you start blasting away each animal you destroy leaves a black stain on the wall. This might not sound like something interesting so far but you haven’t heard the best part. When you stand in front of the stains your character starts cleaning them up, and by doing so gains a bit for his special bar. The bigger the stain the more points you get, and the bigger you special bar is boosted. When the special bar is full you can unleash an attack that destroys all animals within a certain distance. In addition to that you can also drag the broken up robot pieces and bullet casings to little compactors, which if you fill up will give you a box that can either replace your current weapon with another, or refill your current one. There are quite a few weapons available in Alien Chaos but for me my personal favorite is the mini gun. My reason is that if you jump into the air and shoot down you can fly across the room… or just hit the roof, which is also a lot of fun.

This game starts off very easy, you destroy a few kangaroos, some birds and a couple of bears with shields. As you get into the game however it becomes sometimes almost impossible to complete a level. You still have the same animals but they have different colours, ranging from silver, to brown, to black and with each new colour it gets harder for you to kill them. Now I know it is customary for a game to become more difficult as it progresses, but as the birds can phase through walls it soon becomes easy for the animals to sneak up on you. To put it bluntly, there is nothing worse than having no cover and having a kangaroo land on your head. In fact not just a kangaroo, but a bear and even an armadillo too. If your looking for a challenge then this game will give you one, as well as giving you an excuse to kill some robot animals.

There wasn’t just a story mode but also a challenge section, as well as a Streetpass function. Unlike the Story mode however the challenges are just plain hard from the start. You have various test’s ranging from, survival levels to destroy these targets within the time limit challenges. There are ten levels in total and each on is harder than the next, which means you can use this as a way to improve your skill and build up a high score. I found them to be entertaining to start with but once you have completed them or survived for a long time they kinda lost some of their appeal to me. I am not saying that I wouldn’t play them, I’m just saying that there isn’t much of a challenge once you know the levels.

The gameplay itself is pretty good as the response time is almost perfect and the controls are simple too. There is a button to shoot, one to jump, one to aim and one for the special, which is all a point and shoot game like this needs. As there is nothing more I like than simplistic controls I really got into the gameplay. Something that was really noticeable was the accurate response times, this made the timings perfect sometimes letting you jump right over a group of animals just in time. The game was more enjoyable knowing that my death wasn’t anything to do with the controls or anything to do with the gameplay as a whole.

As with all games on the 3DS you can play in 3D. Now this is fun to start off with and does have a great visual quality, but for me I have preferred to play it in the standard 2D. Now that’s not to say I’m not a fan of the 3D effect, its just that when it comes to playing a game where you are shooting robotic animals from all angles the 3D gets kinda distracting. Sometimes I would be looking around for when the next animals would be coming out, only to be unable to really notice it in the 3D. Without the 3D however it was much easier to see the robo birds flying into my face.

Graphically the game looked like a release on the Super Nintendo, it wasn’t amazing graphics but it wasn’t rubbish either. The level design is very simple and yet a brought difficulty that you could not foresee. An example of this is the complex cover and areas of defense on certain levels, which made them more difficult and more entertaining. The background music and sound effects had a similar feel to them as if they had also been taken from a SNES game, but that is probably due to the fact that this game overall wasn’t meant to be anything but a simple and fun.

Pros

- Fun levels and concept

- Good weapon variety and mini gun flying

- Difficult to complete

Cons

- Challenges do not have a long term reply factor

- 3D can be distracting

85 / 100

Alien Chaos 3D is a very good game, and had a lot more to offer than even I thought. The fact that its so difficult to complete some levels (Due to being overwhelmed with animals and no place to hide) makes this the perfect game to play when travelling long distances, or even to play to distract you for a while. I personally will be continuing to play this game as I will not let those animals beat me. Especially the bears with shields, who thinks a bear would need a shield? A robot alien animal menace that needs to be destroyed, that’s who.